Does assessment do more than rank our students?

In reading both Elbow and Routman, I begin to understand how much is loaded into the difficult job of teaching and assessing writing. Elbow seems to  be questioning the whole aspect of ranking students with grades and rubrics. He argues that "ranking leads students to get so hung up on these oversimple quantitative verdicts that they care more about scores than about learning."(Elbow,p.190)  In a system where ranking students leads to better classes, AP and Honors Programs, and often better teachers, in the high school years; Elbow says this ranking has lead to so much confusion by teachers that there is "the tendency to think that if we renounce ranking and grading, we are renouncing the very possibility of judgment and discrimination." (Elbow, p. 191) H e leans towards evaluation and liking writing, and lots more time for students to free write each day which is not evaluated. This goes along with my experience with students this year so far. Most recently with Juanita 2nd graders when we were given the students' Dragon Stories to work on with very little guidance. Almost immediately without knowing or understanding, I started to work on editing conventions with my 2nd grader. I was certainly not inspiring her to create interesting ideas or conferencing with her to help her to find her voice. This kind of repeated correcting with red hash marks and stabbing in the dark at writing, was my own personal writing experience as a child. It will be a challenge to learn a new way, but ultimately worth it.  Routman takes another approach, which seems to be end up at the same place but gets there in a different way. She wants us to prepare the students for high stakes testing. In the course of your writing curriculum, you make a place and time for preparing students to do on-demand writing to a prompt. " Writing on demand is a fact of life. Students need to be able to write essays and respond to prompts on required tests..or as job seekers on applications" (Routman, p. 248)  Routman suggests that as teachers we keep this perspective. We prepare the students for tests by reducing their anxiety and helping them to be "test wise". This is just a part of overall writing curriculum. By collecting writing samples in the students portfolio and having students writing everyday, teachers have a chance to show parents multiple examples of students' writing and be more humane about grading and assessments in general. Routman wants us to be realistic about the atmosphere we find ourselves in as teachers, to work within the given system and to try and have students take responsibility for their own writing and learning. This is where both Routman and Elbow agree. They both want students to peer conference and take responsibility for their own quality writing. Routman wants her students to aim high, " we want students to be asking: did I do enough, have I done my best, have I met the criteria, will my writing engage my reader, have I communicated clearly?" ( Routman,p.255) In creating a classroom that takes into account meeting the current testing requirements while establishing a safe community where writing is taking place everyday, not always to be published, sometimes just for the fun of writing; the hope is to establish students who write for the love of it, because they have learned to write from their heart. No easy task!